My first game design

[Clinton R. Nixon]

The Physical Adept

Long ago - actually, in 1999 - I submitted my first bit of game design to a 2nd edition AD&D fan zine. That's it, right above. I was just looking back last night, and got a big laugh out of looking at this again.

If anyone has links to old, slightly embarrassing stuff they did "back in the day," feel free to post 'em.

[Valamir]

And so, in the mists of time, we can see the distant origins of the Swords of Heaven...

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Sometimes I think that everyone is continually working on the first RPG idea that ever came to them. I have notes from the early 80s for a customization of The Fantasy Trip that cancels out all the spells except for the Image, Illusion, and Summon ones.

Oh, and Clinton, compared with the other offerings on that page, I don't think you have much to be embarassed about ...

Best,
Ron

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Some of my first online efforts:

Cyberpunk angels (1997-98)
http://www.memento-mori.com/games/angels.html

Autopsy (~1997)
http://www.memento-mori.com/games/autopsy.html

Mage LARP (~1995-96)
http://www.memento-mori.com/games/mage.html

Smurf (1995!)
http://www.geocities.com/mandybrooks/smurf2.html

[Clinton R. Nixon]

That's at least 3 people I've seen that did some sort of Smurf game now. Is the smurfiness a game-design stage that somehow I missed. Or, heaven forbid, one that I've yet to go through?

[Jürgen Mayer]

That's at least 3 people I've seen that did some sort of Smurf game now. Is the smurfiness a game-design stage that somehow I missed. Or, heaven forbid, one that I've yet to go through?

Maybe your subconciousness prevents you from remembering your Smurf game design?

[Zak Arntson]

My old Planescape site, it's not THAT terrible:
http://www.geocities.com/athens/7117/psindex.html

It's a shame I don't have the REALLY old one with the blue text on black background (ick). Truly awful web design from 1995.

Also, my Tribe 8 website. It landed me a freelancing gig, so it did its job.
http://zaknet.tripod.com/zbricircle/ The design is neat, but the content is pretty blah.

Lastly, my first Indie design ever: http://www.harlekin-maus.com/games/chthonian/chthonian.html

Ron's got a point about redesigning your first RPG. I'm redesigning my first Indie RPG right now. Though if we went in the wayback machine, the first roleplaying game I wrote (that sticks out in my mind) was back in the mid to late 80's: a Palladium/Battletech inspired game of primitive people in a post-disaster scifi world dealing with ancient war machines still following their orders. I haven't ever gone back there. A S&Sword supplement, maybe?

[Jason L Blair]

Ron is wrong.

Dear God in Heaven, Ron had better be wrong.

I don't think the market could handle a redesign of WORLD COMBAT!!

I'd put it online and post a link, but I like you guys and you've done nothing to deserve it.

Except Jared, but he knows too much of it already.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Ron is wrong.

Dear God in Heaven, Ron had better be wrong.

I don't think the market could handle a redesign of WORLD COMBAT!!

I'd put it online and post a link, but I like you guys and you've done nothing to deserve it.

Except Jared, but he knows too much of it already.

Me and you, Blair. World Combat: Mega Edition. Coming soon. ;)

(it will of course feature a post-apoc. desert planet wif robots, 4-armed dudes and warrior bear dudes who ride 2-headed alligators)

[Jake Norwood]

I did a Marvel Superheroes game that was based off of the Jim Lee X-Men cards from the late eighties/early ninties and used a thirty-sided die. Any of the cards could be used for npc sheets or adapted to be characters in their "vanilla" form by adding one or two things.

We played it for months.

I've got a handwritten copy somewhere, and it would be worth revising, if not for the fact that no one probably has those cards anymore.

Jake

[Paganini]

Well, you can go here to see some of my old stuff. The *really* old stuff that I did back in the late 90s is only available if you search through the back archives of RPG-Create. The very first game I ever designed is somewhere in the rec.games.design archive under the title Adventurer! RPG System! What you should really check out, though, are the Reflections on Role-plalying Rules articles up on my site, writen in the days before I'd ever even heard of GNS or Threefold or anything. Wow, have I come a long way since then! :)

[Le Joueur]

Sometimes I think that everyone is continually working on the first RPG idea that ever came to them.

Truth be known, Scattershot is the first game I ever wrote.  Going on ten years now; I guess that means I don't know what I'm doing, I've never done it before.

Fang Langford

[greyorm]

Hrm...well, the first game I ever developed -- that wasn't D&D with the serial numbers filed off and more complexity and realism added -- was PEGASUS, which you can still see on my website.  However, it has shades of WhiteWolf in it, though I've never liked WW's system, so don't ask me how that happened.

Regardless, I rather like a number of the things I came up with for it, particularly the way it handled skills.  There are a number of things I don't like about it, too, which is likely why I stopped working on it for years and years.  I made a couple changes to it recently, but I don't recall if I ever uploaded them...hrm, in fact, I just saw how I'm going to update the system!  Whoo!

The second system I tried to develop doesn't exist...I'm, ah, still trying to figure out exactly how to make it work: the system is reflective of spiritual and personal growth, but I haven't found a way for it to avoid reflecting specific religious ideals, as that is something I want to avoid due to spiritual growth coming in numerous religious packages, or even hindered by said religious ideals.  Yeah...so...

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Heh. The first game system I ever developed was strongly influenced by TSR's Top Secret (the original, not S.I., which didn't exist then), with its ridiculous number of derived statistics. Champions may also have been an influence. It anticipated GURPS in its goal of genericity, but not in any detail of construction.

Thankfully, all copies have been expunged.

[Valamir]

The *really* old stuff that I did back in the late 90s :)

See, this is where you get bonked on the head by those of us in the over 30 crowd.  Really old stuff is late 70s.  Late 90s was yesterday. ;-)